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EP 300 – Lessons Learned From 300 Episodes

When Scott first started this show, there was this NoteMBA podcast with Chase and Robby, both of whom did a tremendous job. Flash forward to this moment, they’re no longer doing their podcasts on a regular basis. It’s sad, of course, but in celebration of the Note Closers Show’s 300 episodes, Scott reminds you of the sheer amount of opportunities out there. We all start little. The idea is to stay consistent and focused to do what you do on a regular basis. Get the word out there. Spend some time and do it. This show has had a tremendous amount of guests, feedback, and comments. If you have anything that you love to share, let us know. We appreciate it! It’s always amazing to hear what your favorite episode is. As Scott discusses the biggest lessons that he has learned from 300 episodes of the Note Closers Show, know that you’ve been an important part of the success.

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Lessons Learned From 300 Episodes

We’ve got some great things to talk about. Some stuff that I have learned over the last 300 episodes. What are some of the biggest lessons that you have learned over the last 300 episodes? We have covered a lot. We’ve had some amazing speakers. I wanted to start off with just simply thanking all of our past guests who have been on. All our speakers, all the students, all of our vendors that have made appearances. I had to give a big shout out to our sponsors, Quest IRA, Laughlin Associates. I could not do it without those big companies making this happen. I was thinking back about what I’ve offered and discussed and I’m surprised. I thought we would make this show about our students because I offered this up on Facebook, “If you need help, let’s do some live phone calls. If you have any issues or problems or you need some one-on-one coaching, let’s do it live.” Nobody reached out to me.

We just keep rock and rolling. I have to give a big shout out also to some of our guest hosts that took the reigns over while I was out traveling. That’s important for us to get to where we need to be. It also allows for us to stay consistent in our tribe’s lives. I jotted down five big things that I have learned. We started this idea back in late October of 2016. I remember I was watching a Kevin Harrington video from Shark Tank. I’ve seen him speak a couple times, always a dynamic speaker. I remember him talking about how he first used video in his businesses. It helped with QVC and a lot of those other things to sell things. I was like, “I don’t really want to sell things on video.” We’ve been doing a lot of webinars, doing a lot of live stream in our workshops. I heard somebody mention the whole aspect of just the daily touch, the daily communication with your tribe, just staying in touch. That’s what ultimately the Note Closer’s Show started off doing, it was just going to be a Facebook Live.

Note Closers Show Lessons: When we started this Note Closers Show, it was for us to touch base with our tribe on a daily basis. This is about delivering content to our audience.

What’s the day in the life of a note investor? What are we up to? What’s WCN up to? What’s Scott Carson up to? I can stay accountable to everybody out there. Here’s what we’re focused on, here’s what we’re doing. My staff looked at me like I was ridiculous, a little crazy. The goal was to stay in touch. What’s a day to touch our tribe, what’s just a day to communicate, whether it’s five minutes or an hour? Just to touch base with our tribe of investors, vendors, everybody else across the country and actually across the world because we have followers from just about over 130 countries. It was a way to stay in touch. That was the ultimate goal and it has evolved into something amazing, which is what will happen if you stay consistent with 300 episodes. We are over 113,000 downloads over iTunes, well over 500,000 views online through Facebook, over 100,000 views on YouTube and on Vimeo. I’m jacked up about the amount of people that are really enjoying this and the fact that so many people look for this.

I can remember when Gary Vaynerchuk came out with his book, #AskGaryVee. He had his daily podcast. I’m thinking about Kevin Harrington and I’m thinking about what Gary Vaynerchuk was doing with his stuff. I’m like, “Let’s do something.” We’re note closers. We’re closing note deals. Let’s talk to those people that are doing that. Let’s talk about what they’re doing in everyday life, the case studies, the deals and that’s what we’ve done. It’s hard to believe a year and a half has gone by. Where does it go? It has evolved dramatically since. They’re looking at some of those older videos. What have I learned? I have learned a lot of things. It seems longer especially when you’re trying to come up with topics or things to discuss on an almost a daily basis.

Staying Consistent on a Regular Basis

There are five things that I’ve learned. The first most important thing is consistency. That has been the underlying and overwhelming thing to stay consistent in what we’re doing here. Always get it out. That would be the biggest thing. Consistency in anything is important. Whether it’s making offers, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s going to work, or whether it’s riding a bike. Staying consistent on a regular basis is literally the most important thing you can do if you’re going to do anything. A lot of us get paid to be consistent. A lot of us get paid a salary, an hourly wage to show at a job. It’s important to do that. That my number one, being consistent with it. Getting the message out, whether it’s ten minutes, fifteen minutes or an hour, just a little bit each day in marketing. That ultimately is what this has turned into. It’s my way of going, “How do we market on a daily basis?”

We walk into our office, we always have a marketing mindset of what we’re going to accomplish. The Note Closers Show is one of the things we do on a daily basis. It gets us in a great mindset. It gets my energy up. It gets me rocking and rolling with everybody here. I’m going to be the first one to admit, there are some days I do not feel like doing shows. There are days where I’m like, “I just don’t have it in me now. We’re going to move on. I got enough stuff going on. I don’t need to do a show.” I don’t try to go more than a day without doing that. Usually it happens Fridays if I’m traveling or if we have a Fast Track where we have students in. For the most part, we’re excited to have it. Even when I’m out at events sometimes, it’s a great way for me to do a bit of a mind dump on what I’ve learned at events. We’ve done it for DigitalMarketer or Distressed Mortgage Expo, Secret Knock and other places that I’ve been to on a regular basis.

Surviving and Adapting

The number two thing that I have learned over the past 300 episodes is to survive and adapt. What does that mean? Our technology has changed quite a bit and we’ve upgraded things going from just doing a straight Facebook Live video, straight from our cell phones when it became available to using Zoom for it, to using BeLive.tv. We have used several things when it comes to it. When one thing falters or one things I down, just survive and adapt. One of the biggest things that was funny was when we had our Fast Track students coming in. Depending on the weather, depending on how hot it is, we either have the Fast Track here at our office in Austin here at We Close Notes headquarters or just down the street at the Hampton Inn. Why at the Hampton Inn? They turn the AC off on this big corporate buildings on the weekends and it’s 100 degrees outside. It gets pretty hot. We had everybody offsite. We bring everybody by just to grab some stuff, look at some files and just see where we work.

The overwhelming thing is when people walked into this room and like, “It’s so much smaller than we expected.” It’s not a broom closet. It’s about a 10×15 room here but survive and adapt. We can do this show from just about anywhere, whether it’s here with my computer and my webcam and my nice social light and then everything else. We can do it on the road, from a hotel, or from Seattle. There’s a variety of places that we have adapted to doing it. We have survived power outages, Facebook having a weird algorithm to making things.

Everyone out there that’s looking to do something on a regular basis, just realize, you’re going to have to adapt. It’s good to have plan B and plan C when you have something. If something happens, be able to roll with it because delivering is better than perfect. A lot of people worry about their shows being absolutely perfect before they ever post some things and I’m the opposite way. Let’s get it delivered, we can worry about editing after we get it done. We throw it into our production staff, let them mess around with but let’s get it done. Let’s get it uploaded and go from there.

Being Yourself

Number three biggest thing, do your thing. Be you. Don’t try to be anybody else. That’s one of the most important factors out there for anybody looking to do anything. I really came across that so much with Podfest, going to Orlando and meeting and talking with a lot of other podcasters. There were about six of us that are actually doing stuff in real estate of some sort. I had the chance to meet Tyler Sheff and visit with him a little bit about some things and talking about where we were at and where we’re going. It turned out, I felt really good about where we’re at, not knowing how bad we are doing or how well we were doing. Walking away and I’m like, “We’re doing a great job. Let’s keep doing our thing.”

Do your thing and one of the things is stick to it. Don’t try to be somebody else. There’s not that many notes podcast out there. We are now the longest running podcast. We’ve taken that approach with the show and say, “We’re just going to do our thing, some people are going to like it, some people aren’t going to like it.” We flex it up a little bit whether it’s content like this or we bring on interviews or we bring in vendors, the whole goal here is this is what we do with our business and just to be who we are. We are very focused. We’ve had people reach out to us and say, “I love the show. I love how focused it is. It’s direct. It’s not off. It’s just fix and flip or other stuff. It’s literally all about the note business.” That’s what we’ve been very proud of, that we just do our own thing.

Own It

Number four is to own it. Nobody is going to take your show as serious as you do or your marketing as serious as you do. You can get excited and you can have staff helping you out and people help you out, but nobody’s going to actually hit the record button until you’re ready to roll. Yes, you’re going to have support staff. Yes, you’re going to have vendors to help you with things but people aren’t going to take it as seriously as you do on planning, on production, on making things. That doesn’t mean you do everything. One of the smartest things that we do is work with Feed Your Brand and Podetize. I have to give a big shout out to Tom, Tracy and Alexandra Hazzard. We could not do this show without them especially with the last 150 episodes. It has been amazing because they are a big part of why we’re so successful. They do so much of our backend production. They help us with SEO and marketing to get things rolled out.

You have to own it. You have to realize you own this. It’s something you can use. It’s something you can do on a regular basis, but you have to actually own up to it and say, “This is my show. This is the direction I want to go and this is what we’re going to do.” That’s the most important thing with everybody in your life, in your business. You have to own your business. You have to own your entrepreneurial spirit. Don’t be afraid of others out there. Some of our closest friends thought this will not work very well. The proof is in the pudding and so we’re very proud of that.

It’s Not About You, But Your Audience

Number five is it’s not about you. This show is not about me. When we started this Note Closers Show, it was for us to touch base with our tribe on a daily basis. It’s not about me, this is about delivering content to our audience. What do they want to listen to? What do they will need to learn? What are the questions that they have? We’ve done a really good job of coming up with great speakers and guests and coming up with great content. It’s not like our Note Night in America webinars which is a pure hour, hour and a half long content once a week. It’s the little daily tidbits, the little daily lessons to help people overcome things or to help them get over the hump or motivate them. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about me, it’s about helping our audience out there. It’s about helping our Note Nation or our WCN Crew people. That’s what this is all about over the last 300 episodes. It’s about what we can do to help you.

Whether this was going on or not, Scott Carson’s going to do fine in business. Our biggest goal is to help create and educate 10,000 note investors. That’s a lot of people. The only way we can do it is not by one-on-one conversations but by one-on-many. How can we get the information out? How can we help people overcome their obstacles and really take things to the next level and help them grow exponentially? Not everybody can take and sit down for eight hours straight for three days on a virtual workshop or conference. A lot of times people need to take it in bite size because as we can all agree, the mind can only absorb what the ass can withstand. For those of you that binge listened to us or binge watch us, thank you. Those that watch us on a daily basis or download us on a daily basis for the most part, thank you again so much.

We have a question, “Have you ever had a homeowner in pre-foreclosure that want out of their situation and you called their mortgage company and offered to buy the homeowners note? Is that possible to do so? Can you give me example of how that would work?”

This is a very common question we get from people that are new to the note business. You’re dealing with homeowners or pre-foreclosure and stuff like that. We don’t do that. What we do is we’re dealing directly with the bank and stuff. Occasionally, we get people that say, “Can you buy my note from such and such bank?” I will tell you this, it all depends on who the lender is. If you know who the lender is, it might be able to. If you don’t know who the lender is, there’s no help. If it’s a big bank like Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America or GMAC, most of the time, you’re not going to be able to buy that one off. We have done it when we’ve targeted specific assets like that, it only came from either smaller regional banks or banks that we already had a buyer in relationship with and we are able to carve one out.

It’s very difficult for you just to call the mortgage company, especially if you’re not talking to the secondary marketing department or the special assets department. If you’re just calling the 1-800 number, they’re probably going to tell you no. The thing you’ve got to keep in mind, if it’s a pre-foreclosure, they’ve already done most of the work, they’ve already started the process, they’re probably not likely to sell the note off unless it’s in a longer foreclosure state. There are a lot of variables to your question. If you know who the bank is, great, but if it’s one of those bigger banks, it’s not going to happen. What we do that works a little bit better is we contact banks directly and we get the list of notes that they’re looking to sell. That helps us dictate offers at that point but we don’t usually go the route of dealing with homeowners and trying to go that route.

I can tell you, years ago, there were a couple of guys that were out there selling a note course talking about contacting the banks directly or contacting borrowers directly. They were contacting borrowers directly and then trying to contact the bank directly. That’s not a good thing. They were selling this program without the big caveat of not to call Chase, Bank of America, Citibank or the bigger banks. We’re getting people that were upset because they’re trying to call to buy the notes directly from these big guys. That’s where a big chunk of what’s available out there as far as pre-foreclosures and people were getting upset. If it’s a smaller regional bank, you may have some opportunity there. You just have to keep in mind, there are a lot of variables. How far behind they are? How far in foreclosure? What’s the situation?

What we have done in a variety of ways when homeowners reach out to us, if they want to walk away just trying to find out what’s in default. It might be a good subject-to deal provided they’re not too upside down. If there is any equity, if their interest rate’s low, it might be an opportunity to do a subject-to deal, which I have done in the past. It varies on the situation. It all depends on who the lender is. If you say, “It’s a big bank.” Then no, it’s not going to happen. The big banks aren’t going to sell you a one-off note. The beautiful thing about what we do is that banks provide us lists that they want to get rid of and we go in and cherry pick that.

One of the things that I have found from doing this is that this helps my business in other ways. It helps me with raising capital. It helps me with just getting the word out because we see a huge influx, especially on the SEO optimization with what Tom and Tracy and Feed Your Brand is doing for us. Any type of marketing you can do on a regular basis, whether it’s blogs or videos, emails or social media posts. As long as you’re doing it consistently and providing great content, it’s going to help your content of any sort. Luckily you build a lot of goodwill doing stuff on a consistent basis. Anytime you do something on a consistent basis is going to help you with your business. It helps to get deals closed, raise more capital, deals move, get the word out on what you’re doing and build a bit more of a notoriety for yourself. Those that are doing stuff on a regular basis with their emails and other things are starting to see that definitely across the board.

Note Closers Show Lessons: The number two thing that I have learned over the past episodes is to survive and adapt.

I know there are some people out there looking to do podcasts on a regular basis and there are a lot of podcasts, over 600,000 different podcasts are out there. I don’t know how many of those are active. I know there are plenty of people that have started podcasts that don’t even get ten episodes and they cancel. They start going in a different direction. The biggest thing I think that’s important is that if you do it, either do it solo or if you do have a cohost, make sure you’re on the same page. I was watching a thing on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, talking about two guys in Blazers. These guys were talking about soccer in the United States and how they’ve just done a tremendous job over the years basically by themselves. Make sure you’re focused, make sure you’ve got the same goals and even if you’re rotate, that’s great. If you’re going to do two guys or two gals or whatever it is, try not to sway too far from your message and your ultimate goal of what you want to do. You want some clearly defined goals to make things happen and stick with it.

That’s been our biggest thing. When I say our, I mean our team, my staff. I want to give a big shout out to Stephanie Goodman as well for not getting upset sometimes when we’re traveling and doing different things. I go, “I’ve got to do a podcast episode.” More so embracing the point now, that it’s important to realize is become a staple in what we do. Those are the five biggest things. Staying consistent, survive and adapting with the technology, when things go sideways, doing our own thing, owning it. Taking ownership of what we’re doing and realizing, this is not about me, this is about our audience. We’ve had a tremendous amount of guests, tremendous amount of feedback and tremendous amount of comments. If you have anything that you love to share, let me know. I appreciate it. I always love to see what people’s favorite episode is or what their favorite comments.

At some point, we’re going to have to move over to a second series of the Note Closers Show on iTunes. It only allows the first 300 episodes of the podcast to show. When I first started this, there was this Note MBA podcast with Chase and Robby. They did a tremendous job. I was very sad that they’re not doing their podcasts on a regular basis. I talked to Robbie. He’s moving to a different direction. Note Inc., they’ve got to one season. I’m glad to see her now. She’s going to come back. There are more episodes that are being offered. There’s plenty of opportunity out there. I’m glad to see a few people. Ryan Barnett’s lining up with his little podcast. Eric Hyde has talked about doing it. Some of these guys out there, they’re doing little things. It’s great. It’s awesome. I’m glad to hear that. We all start little.

The idea is to stay consistent and focused to do what you do on a regular basis and everybody has a different take on things. Dan Zitofsky is starting a podcast. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some people will get upset like, “Why are they trying to compete with you?” Nobody is going to compete with me. That’s the biggest thing that you have to realize. As I say, just do your thing. If your thing is doing apartment complex or turnkey rentals, just do your thing. You can’t go wrong. It’s like doing a video. If you do a video, do a video. Just do it. Get the word out there and spend some time and do it. I know a lot of podcasters that spend one or two days a month and that’s all they do. On that one or two days, they get all episode filmed. They’re not doing a live stream like we are doing. At Podfest, I learned a lot of people stick to the audio side of iTunes and you have other people that do the video side of doing a YouTube channel. There’s a lot of crossover there. What we’ve been doing with crossover with videos at Vimeo and YouTube, we’re also throwing it down there. Some people like it, some people don’t.

The thing you’ve got to keep in mind is do your things. It’s not a competition. I don’t look at it and say, “I’m going to go out there and knock out a million episodes in the first year.” That’s probably not going to happen with our niche. There are guys that are in the process of doing their show for three years and has barely 100,000 downloads. They have a niche in what they do and they are really good at their niche. That’s awesome. There’s an audience out there of people who are exactly like you. There’s a niche out there that people are looking for help. They’re looking to connect. Facebook has brought that together with groups since its beginning. The whole podcast fad, it’s been around for a while. It’s going to be around a whole lot more because the more people can do on their phones, the more they can listen to things, the better off we’re all going to be because it becomes smarter and faster to make things out.

I want to say thank you again. We could not be at 300 episodes without you. Thank you so much for sharing. We really enjoy what we do. Leave a review on iTunes. Make sure to do that for us. That helps us out tremendously. For those who are looking at our show and are reading the reviews before they listen to the show. As always, if you know somebody who’s interested in notes or somebody who’s interested in real estate investing, feel free to share the show with them. Thank you for all you that comment on BiggerPockets and other platforms like that recommending the show. We totally appreciate it. We’ll continue to strive to deliver great content, great speakers, great guest host and a great overall experience for all our audience out there in the note nation. Go out, do something, and we look forward to seeing you and to continuing to see you at the top.